• Plan an investigation or test a design individually and collaboratively to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence as part of building and revising models, supporting explanations for phenomena, or testing solutions to problems. Consider possible confounding variables or effects and evaluate the investigation’s design to ensure variables are controlled.

• Plan and conduct an investigation individually and collaboratively to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence, and in the design: decide on types, how much, and accuracy of data needed to produce reliable measurements and consider limitations on the precision of the data (e.g., number of trials, cost, risk, time), and refine the design accordingly.

• Plan and conduct an investigation or test a design solution in a safe and ethical manner including considerations of environmental, social, and personal impacts.

• Select appropriate tools to collect, record, analyze, and evaluate data.

• Make directional hypotheses that specify what happens to a dependent variable when an independent variable is manipulated.

• Manipulate variables and collect data about a complex model of a proposed process or system to identify failure points or improve performance relative to criteria for success or other variables.

Performance Standards

• HS-LS1 – FROM MOLECULES TO ORGANISMS: STRUCTURES AND PROCESSES

  • HS-LS1-3: Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• None for Biology

Performance Standards

• HS-PS4 – WAVES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS IN TECHNOLOGIES FOR INFORMATION TRANSFER

  • HS-PS4-3: Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning behind the idea that electromagnetic radiation can be described either by a wave model or a particle model, and that for some situations one model is more useful than the other.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• PS3: ENERGY

  • PS3.D: Energy in Chemical Processes and Everyday Life

    • Although energy cannot be destroyed, it can be converted to less useful forms—for example, to thermal energy in the surrounding environment.

    • Solar cells are human-made devices that likewise capture the sun’s energy and produce electrical energy.

    • The main way that solar energy is captured and stored on Earth is through the complex chemical process known as photosynthesis.

    • Nuclear Fusion processes in the center of the sun release the energy that ultimately reaches Earth as radiation.

Performance Standards

• HS-PS2 – MOTION AND STABILITY: FORCES AND INTERACTIONS

  • HS-PS2-3: Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision.

  • HS-PS2-5: Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that an electric current can produce a magnetic field and that a changing magnetic field can produce an electric current.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• PS4: WAVES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS IN TECHNOLOGIES FOR INFORMATION TRANSFER

  • PS4.A: Wave Properties

    • The wavelength and frequency of a wave are related to one another by the speed of travel of the wave, which depends on the type of wave and the medium through which it is passing.

    • Information can be digitized (e.g., a picture stored as the values of an array of pixels); in this form, it can be stored reliably in computer memory and sent over long distances as a series of wave pulses.

    • Waves can add or cancel one another as they cross, depending on their relative phase (i.e., relative position of peaks and troughs of the waves), but they emerge unaffected by each other. (Boundary: The discussion at this grade level is qualitative only; it can be based on the fact that two different sounds can pass a location in different directions without getting mixed up.)

    • Geologists use seismic waves and their reflection at interfaces between layers to probe structures deep in the planet.

  • PS4.C: Information Technologies and Instrumentation

    • Multiple technologies based on the understanding of waves and their interactions with matter are part of everyday experiences in the modern world (e.g., medical imaging, communications, scanners) and in scientific research. They are essential tools for producing, transmitting, and capturing signals and for storing and interpreting the information contained in them.